In a dramatic
turn of events

"Bang a gong,
Get up and dance"

Now why didn't
I write that

What if I start a poem while I'm smiling
How many get started that way
this seems to be the safest venue
for crying out loud

The thing we(me) most care about
indelicately subtracted
conferring a lack of oxygen
spasms onto a page

something uncontaminated
by expertise in anything
a rose, a new born, love
gone to thinness, memory

this is that beach, and we
certainly me me me oh me
discomforts on a page
almost senselessly

don't agree too fast there bub
and notice the nature of you now
what if you had been smiling
before you found

Just brain space
Occupying
Itself

With
Some natural
Antipathy


Copyright@2018 Dennis Willis

You can't handle it

I can't talk to all of you
honestly

You've something in
your head

I neither agree with
nor wish to offend

I truly respect you
my human equal

I truly suspect you
your head muscles

Handed to you as true
wherever you grew

I know they are strong
can't be wrong

Yet your heart hurts
to some degree

At the dissonance
heartfelt

And leading to this
poetry thing

Am I doing stuff you'll love
how could i

I admit
my inner brain

is very clear
on this

Rex likes
rears

And seizes
my consciousness

like a newly minted fed
seizes an Escalade

wafting clouds
of coke

when one rounds
into sight

sigh
***

And I am barbaric
Barbarous

The man no woman
Admits

Consciously

Blood draws down

Into the past
of have no words

just
must

must
have

Becoming
Civilized

Sure
have worth

Says the DNA
spending you

to see
in time

to save
itself

some


Copyright@2018 Dennis Willis

My body doesn't care
What my mind has to say
To be touched by you

the bindery
of findery
or is it
grindery
we mindery
here
the tray that
taught me something
or the shelf that proved
my eyes are blind
or the hdmi that
morphed
as i watched
into usb
showing
the hallucination
I am now
within
thin always
wraps
your heart
beat anyway

I rebel against this
and any suggestion
you have about that

I rebel against myself
and my own guidance
's so wrong about that

This gets me to free space
the no pressure vacuum
I finally explode again

Obliteration sang as a jingle
brake rock lockity spracht
zara zara zarathrusta

I owe you an apology
for all these attempts
these rents of garments
these - i swallow -
hesitations upon keys

And this past
and this future

it's this now
that's troublesome

hope hops onto
my neck

I ache with almost
feeling

Pushed up into
notice

This threat leans
in onto

this time
and i waver

sinking deeper
under

spells

we live under
spells

the magic
of no odor

from the princess
dancing all night


Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

This is me
taking
  my brain out
and whacking it against things
to see
  if
I
  can
  get
something
  started
ouch

ca-chunk
now
we're




Copyright@2018 Dennis Willis

Fewer reads
is good right?

Spastic barnacles of time
snap me into place roughly
competitively jerking my chain
good evening relative calm

Strangled superposition
fluoresce in wrinkled
cupcakes of listening
moments hard by your heart

I take a breath in the theatre
stars bend inward ignorant
they are slaves to our birth
if that happened at all now

Some deep bloom crimson
would have to be or violet
singes the flavor tannic
and surreptitiously sweet

Always almost catching me
right there red handed
drunk on being caught
a stone higher up the mount

clearly poems
of dubious
dubiquity
see me
as an easy
means of escape

I always think
then
I always realize
don't you

I chicken out
here
and then grasping
limieux

Hockey that is
puck
squirting away to you
pew pew pew

The socks I bleached
are haunting me
pale in darkness
restless soles watching
as I light candles and
incense my shoes
pulling their tongues
taught against lacing
up I have found better

Anklez bare to needs
flashing alternatively
propping me from falling
forward my jars of wish
that was printed on time
wailing on instruments
always carried unslung
in these neighborhoods

you wander alone ****
to learing appreciation
cigars and ham blowing
lives in curlers too hot
the at home underwear
holding us apart
falsely I claimed
being here again

Feeling several stanzas
of cabernet
somehow preceeded
by two days of angst

Your face floats
into view
pouring in
on me

Wrenching words
constrict aortic
bandwidth
bloodlessly

I wait
for your
sanity
to peek out

ah sunshine
held in rain
U r
a string

of not there
I pull over
Muhself
in abdegnation

grunt in
sheer nylon
slipping knots
into happy thoughts

in absentia
a toast
a low odded
appearance

Bet that I lose
Pay
Lose write
Pay



Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

It pulls on me
and I pinch
to it
and clench back
my middle
draws thin
I snap in two

wildly freaking
out
I give up
try to get near
remerge
myotherpartself

it's no use
tho
that part's
gone
and I
am half
again

Where is my porpoise?
That ******* is slick and slippery and I can never find his ***

Spacing you out
the hatch
if I could
project decisiveness
tightly
it's a floral
arrival
you see things
I don't
Wrestling arrives
a moment contended
Until your lips
there is real power
everything else
hopes to be
poetry

Put a moment
in your life
today
that u will
tell
over and over
Do it again
tomorrow
Pile up delightful
ones

What kind

Think of the stories
you tell now
to explain u
to get loved

Write yourself
into life


Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

I waited for you
to love me
in anger

Your decisions
and the pressing
of all I am

Into your pocket
tucked down
nonchalant

Where you found it
please

This heart does not belong
down there

Pick it up
Now please

Please please please

Don't just walk away
What is wrong with you

"Okay
If that's the way it must be
then okay."

I need to put something
back

into myself today
that feels like a beating
heart



Copyright@2018 Dennis Willis

The sudden wretchedness
Of my existence
Writes itself

Onto quiet inebriating sips
Of my reticence
lighting itself

I am the entangler
the wrangler of nows
never thens
I am at an action
a spooky distance
away from really
near to you
and elsewhere too
all at different times
that were undistinguishable
and we went round and
another shape              
I've never seen
encompassed it better
than these poor words
collecting

I've leaned back
in understanding
in

flavor
in spin
I am revolving

what is the upside
I wonder
of color

I can't reside
on time
while space escapes

running
as fast
as possible

this seems
improbable
reading

writing
stillness
out

aren't we left
with something
wonderful

One must capitulate
surrender
to sleep

that orchestra
of naught
of shuffling
of fear dancing free

i thought you
knew
your notes
your tone

fingers reel it in
to clicks
to presses
on letters

and I know
there is
a song
underneath

quiet
being that
quiet



Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

Quiet love drifts down
around me today

I've put all my umbrellas
down

Drench me please
I tell the reign

the incessant
Rein of time

You are always warm
and wet
and blowing

Me forward
till home's
fully gathered
in sweet dissipation


Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

Why do I give the finger
to what I love
why do i give the finger
to the world
why do I give the finger
to my own good
Why do I give the finger
to you

Another deadening
has succeeded
almost one more

a superposition
of angst and the
inability to feel it

dead reckoning
of the assertion
going south

and then tomorrow
I will finish this
without opinion

radar detectors
flashing away
at such speed

I abjure a nihilistic
aren't they pretty
but can't resist

does a woman not know
how she looks
when she smiles
and I don't know
my name

Oh the crying I do
against a feather
of (what word
oh god what word goes here)

Nerve, the nerve
scalded
by your eyes
incomprehensibly

Goes here goes here
again again

and the tears run
they run
and i admit
i am shaking

and the reach
of this line of light
piercing
raggedy man

Sideways
not quite
on the rails
squealing parts
smiling is such
an understatement
cackling down the track

Careening without graphics
across your place
with great regard
I intend to scar

deeper

I'm killin
my editor
corse I plied im

See blotto

See sideways

See

My own repeats
cockblocked

Whilst time
Laughs on

tasty steers
the fateful

ship
In time


Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

You have to follow because
it follows
Of course I made this up
and that's ok these days
R wants you to know
there are people eating poets
and things even less nice
are going on with short story writers
(just had to)
and nobody and I mean

is paying attention
or talking about this
and it's a conspiracy
affecting many many
there must be dozens
wolfed down like
whiny popcorn

oh the indemnity
of being earless
and mundane
and I'm running
thataway

I have rants
they are
the in-thing
So many
perhaps
I should
number
'em
Apply
nicknames
sort them
in order
of likelihood
to save
the universe
flat tepid rants
for sale
it turns out

Never see it coming
The rascal in red
Takes over my head
I can't remember
what to me is now dead
when I am red

Barely breathing
I'm plummeting
Some bottom
Some precipice
of faces fading
and still to fade

Held back in some stable
a beast breathes the night
and understands music
it is a sleigh it is a way
Color is held fast
the imaginary passed

Are sneaking up
my neck
from Shang Hai

We put our hearts there
When we didn't know
They was our hearts
Taped shut with fear

That there lessened
then swamped
There are now so many
Right ways

Single individual
Heartbeats
Are now
Would be smiles

Small furry things
Unseen for an age
Blink hopefully
Seek higher tongues



Copyright@2018 Dennis Willis

So here you ventured
a line or two
and I kicked back
whatever arose

it is within
all this caution
all this old
let's not **** each other

lexicon of hejeebees
we have to give
each other
for nothing

when we really
really want
something entirely
to ****

So I liked the flavor
of just now
It could be the usual
seasonings
<imagine digression
evoking flavorful
yet edgy "spices"
in your versatile pants>
now i don't like
just now
how did that happen

Once again I discover
that I am trying to render
myself unconscious
with a palliative device

this is the downhill side
of my chair's revolution now
ninety degrees to the left
and I'm on top of the world

I always think I've
written something
then I learn
that I haven't

I always think I've
kitten something
then I learn
that I haven't

You always think I've
hitten something
feel the squirm
and I haven't

.

I thought I wrote
good poems tonight
and then I read the top ones
f me

the crunchiness of energy
wrinkled, stiff stored up
in nooks and crannies
of nooks and crannies

the bands these bands
and lines of force and
opinions of bored matter
about just where you

might be right now
are all wavering red
as this past second
panics and runs off

carrying one end only
of my thoughts strung
through bending time
stuttering about acting

This arm has insufficient
reach
discerns a small circle of
stone
and nothing from you returns
life

are you the coldness of right
oh
I know sensibility
so
certain of what is here judged
out
read syllables fall stricken
dead

I would write more
but you scare me
I'm not as
[something]
as you
I just don't
know for sure
what
Not as rhythmic
mebbe
I don't even
Not as run up
on something
as you
Not as in
denial
Not as
Knotted
Just not
absent here
as you
leaning back

uncertain as to who you are
i picture pirates
with red pens
would be nuns

Doling out syllables
of need or want
barely a nod
to beauty

She smashes dinner
like it earned
a whuppin and is
gettin' it

She nods under her hat
this startling beauty
and things get mixed up
on my tongue

Hopefull-lessness
strikes as she smites
proactively my wants
into salty crumbs